Officials raised the death toll to two in the deadly implosion of a massive tank holding noxious chemicals at a paper and pulp manufacturing plant in Longview, Washington.
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The second death was of a person who had been transported from the Nippon Dynawave Plant to the hospital with injuries from the rupture of the tank — built to hold 900,000 gallons, officials said Wednesday.
An additional nine people have not been accounted for since the Tuesday morning accident and seven employees are hospitalized with injuries, officials said. One injured firefighter was treated and released.
“We’re bracing ourselves for this being the deadliest industrial tragedy in modern Washington state history. When you have a tragedy of that scale, the impacts on individuals, on families, and on communities is profound,” Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson said at a news conference Wednesday.
Scott Goldstein, Cowlitz County Fire Chief, said officials do not know the locations of the nine who are still missing.
“We have searched the area, the area that is searchable. We do not have the ability to state that we have located all nine, nor the ability to state where those nine were,” Goldstein said.
Images showed the spherical tank was partially collapsed and bowed to the side with a large side ripped open. The implosion occurred at about 7:15 a.m. during a shift change.
“First responders, emergency workers, and nurses saw unthinkable horrors yesterday, and I am encouraged by how people are checking in on each other,” said Rep. Marie Glusenkamp-Perez, a Washington Democrat.
The tank that ruptured held a chemical brew — used to convert wood chips to pulp — made up of sodium hydroxide, sodium sulfide and disodium carbonate, officials said.
“Onsite recovery operations, recovery efforts began earlier today, and they’ll continue to be slow, methodical, and deliberate,” said Matt Amos, Longview Fire Battalion Chief.
Goldstein said that the industrial disaster also resulted in contamination of the Columbia River, but there is no danger to the Longview City water supply. About a dozen dead carp had been recovered from a river dike, Ferguson said.
Search and rescue officials had to work cautiously while they determined the stability of the ruptured tank that holds the highly caustic chemicals, extending their search and rescue operations. The operation is now in recovery stage, officials said.
Officials originally estimated about 90,000 gallons of the chemical white liquor mixture remained in the tank. But their evaluation Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning suggested that the amount still in the tank is smaller, about 25,000 gallons, Goldstein said.
Based on that estimate, which the fire chief described as “conservative,” roughly 550,000 to 570,000 gallons of the chemicals left the tank, Goldstein said. He said more specific information would come as the root cause and factors are determined.
The contents of the tank are leaking out slowly, slower than on Tuesday, which led officials to lower their estimate, he said.
To bolster the search and rescue, 46 members of the Washington National Guard were deployed to the site. That included 10 civil support team members to assist the state’s Department of Ecology with air monitoring, Ferguson said. Thus far, there has been no evidence of airborne contamination, he said
Another 20 members of the Guard’s Homeland Response Force will help with decontamination, the governor said.
One of the workers killed at the plant was Gilbert Bernal, 52. His son, Eli, also worked at the plant.
Gilbert Bernal’s daughter, Geovana Bernal-Ferguson, posted on Facebook a tribute to her father. He was a hard worker who went to school while working full time, when his children were young, to give his family a better life, she wrote.
“It’s still surreal to be in my childhood home and not have my dad be here with us,” she said in the post.
Authorities said that as they recover victims, the bodies will be decontaminated before being sent to the Cowlitz County Coroner’s Office for identification and family notification.
A number of inspections of the Nippon Dynawave plant remain open, said Joel Sacks, director of the state’s Department of Labor. Paper mill plants are subjected to multiple regulatory inspections because of the nature of the chemicals and the processes used.
According to Washington’s State Dept of Ecology, Nippon Dynawave has about 550 employees total with 450 working in its liquid packaging plant.
Attempts by NBC News to reach the company president, some supervisors and workers at the plant were unsuccessful.
Nippon Dynawave is a U.S. subsidiary of Nippon Paper Industries Co. Ltd., based in Japan.
